About

(Under construction… in perpetual beta)

I work at panagenda as a Digital Transformation and Data Analytics Doer. A well seasoned Social / Open Business strategist and 2.0 practitioner with over 21 years of working experience on Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Learning, Online Communities and Social Networking for Business, I’m currently focusing on helping organizations make the most out of their own change initiatives and digital transformation programmes (including Social Business) through making sense of their own data analytics visualisations.

138 comments

@Tom, catching up with the messages and blog comments mentioned above. It looks like LI keeps misbehaving big time and everything, which is why I always use my private personal email for the sign-up process to avoid such problems. Not sure whether you are using Google Plus as well, but that could well be another medium we can interact on, including privately. For the time being, check your Inbox! 😛

Luis,
I don’t trust Google with privacy either. They’ve been dinged twice by the FTC, and their published policy is atrocious. Privacy policies should be on one page with user options to deselect any parts they don’t want to agree to.

Back to an outsider’s solution to real-world problems, in 1999, I invented paperless ticketing with digital resales/transfers in the subscribed sporting/entertainment events secondary market controlled by illegal ticket scalpers. To understand how my 1999 invention was a “disruptive innovation,” you should read “The Master Switch” by Columbia law professor Tim Wu. He has written an historical account of disruptive (game-changing) vs sustaining (minor improvements) innovation in the communication, information and entertainment industries starting with Western Union’s hard-wired telegraph, and how disruptive innovations spawn new companies that eventually attempt to monopolize the information and communication industries (today, Google, Apple, Amazon?), a process that Professor Wu calls “the Cycle.” (See also, The Innovator’s Dilemma, When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, by Professor Clayton Christensen). Significantly, what you identify as “thinking outside the inbox” on your website, Professor Wu describes as the outsider’s perspective, that is, a person from outside the industry who invents solutions to real-world problems.

In 1997, I was an outsider to the sports ticketing industry, a sports fan and a lawyer by day. I had paid a colleague the $45 face value for 4 tickets to take my family to a sold-out Florida Panthers hockey game in Miami. On our way into the hockey arena, I saw ticket scalpers selling tickets for 2 to 3 times the ticket’s face value and a little boy crying as he walked away from the box office it had sold out of the affordable general admission tickets.

I was expecting a jam-packed arena for the hockey game. It was jam-packed, but only in the upper level. The lower level, consisting of mostly season ticket holders, was about 70% full. I was shocked and couldn’t understand how people could waste so much money while a dad and his crying kid were turned away from the arena because it was “sold out.” It was at that moment that I thought to myself, if today’s technology enabled us to swipe a credit card at an ATM to get cash out of our checking account in a matter of a few seconds, why can’t season tickets be managed digitally with instantaneous fan access (season ticket holder or transferee) at an ATM-like turnstile activated by a credit card swipe and dispensing a post-entry paper ticket with seating information.

This bugged me for the rest of the year, so I began researching the “no-show” problem for season-ticketed pro sports and determined that my initial thought was in fact the solution to the problem. All that had to be done was to remove the paper ticket from the admission process, maintain admission rights on a server controlled by the team (hence AdmissionControl.com), and provide season ticket holders with an Internet-accessed computer system to manage their season tickets digitally in real time, to include free transfers to family, friends, colleagues, business clients etc, free donations (e.g.Big Brothers/Sisters organizations, military veterans, firefighters police etc.,) and team/venue approved resales to the public. To me, this was a win-win solution for everyone except the ticket scalpers.

In my next installment, I will discuss how I went from being a disinterested observer in 1997, to an entrepreneur in 1998 and 1999 because, in the words of Dr. John, “if I don’t do it, you know somebody else will.”

I wonder why many companies in Africa don’t prefer to invest in KM activities if we are talking if we are looking towards innovation and poverty eradication especially in the third world countries where i belong.

That’s a very interesting question, Moudy, and I guess it’s most probably down to those companies not wanting to relinquish control of their workforce by freeing up information flows for them to make better decisions and become more open and collaborative over time, changing the whole game around how people get work done, together. Unfortunately, I doubt those very same companies would have much of a choice seeing how social technologies keep accelerating the pace on how we connect, share and collaborate with one another. Think they better adapt or face some pretty intense and challenging times 🙂

Other than to say Hi, I write to let you know about an new app -which is also related to your position on e-mail use.

I´m referring to eRank® -The Effectiveness E-mail Processing App.SM

Your Dec. 2011 participation on The New York Time´s Room for Debate on The Corporate E-mail Use was very interesting and extremely related to what eRank has to offer. Among other things, I believe eRank delivers to what you said then: “Figure out how to make smarter use of it”. Let me explain:

– What: eRank is the effectiveness feature that was missing in e-mail processing. It was designed to help users concentrate on the e-mails that come first.

– How: eRank empowers the Sender to label his e-mails with priority levels with an expected time of response for each. By doing so, the recipient not only gets his messages labeled, but also classified.

– Why: What makes eRank stand out are three things: Its vision is based on “us”; its structure rests on a shared language; and its solution is simple, but powerful.

More importantly, eRank 1.0 is the result of a decade-strong, proven, best business practice turned into embeded software.

It has just been launched globally on the App Store. Starting December 17th 2012 users can download it and you´re invited to take a sneak peak.

We are happy to invite you to the upcoming Gran Canaria Business Week 2013 conference with the theme “Internet Business and Social Media” — produced by SiVivaEspana.com, with more than 100 000 Facebook fans for Spain and Gran Canaria. The event will be held at various places in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria this January 1-4. 2013. This is an all English business conference in Meloneras and Las Palmas, mainly focused on internet business and social media opportunities.

Media people are given media pass to cover the event. Perhaps you would like to be a part of the very first annual business conference in Gran Canaria which will be held on the first week of January every year.

Hi Mary, thanks ever so much for dropping by and for the information details, along with the kind invitation! It’s *greatly* appreciated! The event “Gran Canaria Business Week 2013 Conference” *does* sound very good, indeed! I would be truly delighted to participate in the event as a media / blogger, as I have done in multiple other various different events, but alas during those days that the conference will be taking place I will be on holidays myself and I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it this time around since I have already got other plans along the way, as you can imagine. If only I would have known earlier on… 🙂

However, I’m trying to see if I can shift them around and perhaps make it to the main event on Thursday or Friday, either of those days, in Las Palmas de G.C. although I can’t guarantee it at the moment. Mary, what would be the best way of getting in touch with either you or Hans himself to confirm beginning of next week whether I can make it or not, and, if not, I would still want to get together to meet up face to face for a coffee or a drink and talk some more about Gran Canaria Business Week, since I’m very interested in the overall event and superb initiative. Can you please do let me know what would be the best way to arrange that F2F meetup? Like I said, I will try to shift things around over here and perhaps make it to the event rather on Thursday or Friday next week, but no guarantees. Will be in touch to confirm whether I can shift things around!

Thanks a lot, once again, for the kind invite and look forward to meeting you both as some point!

Hi Sarah! Awww, thanks much for dropping by and for sharing that very kind and warm feedback commentary. Really sorry about your best friend losing his job, but I am sure things will be all right pretty soon! And reading you are on your way over here I am sure they will! No doubt!

I am sure you will be all right, but, either way, if you would need any further help while settling down over here, with any kind of advice, please do let me know. I will be more than happy to help any which way to help you folks move along quickly! If you are using Twitter, feel free to reach out to me at @elsua and we can keep in touch that way, perhaps even meet up F2F over time!

Let me know how I can help and all the best with the move and the new adventure about to begin! Exciting times, indeed!

Thanks again for the lovely feedback on the blog and have a good one! Hope to see you both soon!

Hello, I was on [www.elsua.net/2013/01/08/social-business-in-2013-an-opportunity-open-business/] and I saw a lot of great resources about starting a business. I wanted to share an article I helped create that is a non-promotional guide on what to expect when starting a business.

Hi Martin, I guess it’s always better to respond later than never into a blog conversation, right? Well, that’s probably one of main reasons as to why I enjoy blogging quite a bit that conversations can resurface over time. And even more when I have finally had a chance to look into the link you have shared above and it surely is some pretty good, solid advice on how people can get started with their own business! And you are right, along with Open Business as part of the mix there are plenty of really good tips out there in that article to benefit. Thanks a bunch for sharing it along over here. I am sure it will be helpful to a bunch of people over here reading along!

My name is Veerle and I am a writer for the MaxBerber blog, which is a blog about the global nomadic lifestyle. The reason for starting this blog is that I work for a company called HotelsAhead, and we develop new hotel concepts around a specific target audience. We are currently developing an extended stay hotel around the global nomadic workforce and we grew so fond of this lifestyle that we wanted to share experiences, news and information on it at our blog. I have been following your website and reading your stories and am very interested about hearing more about your global nomadic lifestyle.
You seem like a rare breed of global nomad, one that works for a large company and travels much for work – that’s very interesting and I’d love to hear more!
I was wondering if I could steal 10 minutes of your time to ask you some questions over Skype (or you can of course fill out some of my questions if you have little time) and of course also promote your website in this interview.

Hi Veerle, thanks a lot for dropping by and for the heads up! How fascinating and how delightful to read about some of the really cool things you guys are doing with that nomadic lifestyle a bunch of us have been doing for a little while now already. I would be delighted to go through that interview with you over in Skype and everything, but I’m going to have to ask you for a few days before I can do it, since my agenda is already fully booked up till mid-next week… Would it be ok with you to perhaps get together on May 2nd or 3rd and have that Skype call?

If so, leave a follow-up response over here and I will contact you right afterwards to confirm date / time and exchange Skype IDs. Thanks ever so much for the wonderful opportunity and really look forward to it!

Hi Veerle! Terrific! What time on May 3rd? Would early in the morning EDT, or early afternoon, work better for you? Let me know and I will confirm it with you and block my calendar right away. Thanks!!

Hi Veerle! Fantastic! I have just reached out to you on Skype requesting to connect our IDs there and I will be looking forward to speaking with you on May 3rd at 9am EDT… Thanks again for the opportunity! Have a good one! 🙂

To up your visibility within IBM, Google, FaceBook, Twitter, …
You must expand your audience. You talk about
talking with others. Do you have any ideas how
IBM can actually learn something from Google+,
FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter and make me, an IBM Retiree and internet maven happy?

How can IBM use social media to make extremely happy customers — thereby earning trust. Trust will eventually translate to profit, but until trust is earned, a company cannot expect to succeed.

There is no profit motive in capitalism. It is all about earning trust from customers. Address that with your social media studies and you will succeed and be loved by IBM, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Twitter, …

IBM and Microsoft never wanted to deal with individuals — me or you. They look for business relationships. That is OK, but when the world is turning to individual relationships through Google+, FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest,
Instagram,… IBM, Microsoft, HP and other’s only
interested in business relationships must simply wait. That’s what IBM did in the 1990’s under Gerstner. That’s what HP is doing now. That’s what Microsoft is doing now.

Gerstner did very much more. He moved IBM out
of non-profitable businesses. He retired and chose Palmisano (SERVICES!!!) to lead and Sam
did wonderfully. Sam proved that growth is
not necessary to succeed.

Ooops, sorry to pontificate.
History of IBM is interesting, wouldn’t you say?

If you have watched IBM’s entry into the “cloud”
you will understand why it does not understand people — only businesses.

Hi Ed, thanks for that extended feedback commentary and for the lovely and insightful trip down the memory lane. It’s greatly appreciated and I am sure the readers of this section of the blog would appreciate it tremendously. So thanks for that!

Have you ever heard of any of these initiatives by any chance: Digital IBMer, IBM SELECT or IBM Voices? Please do let me know if you haven’t as I may be able to share some additional reading on each of them. Those are *just* some of the various initiatives from the company to help IBMers how, in order to be successful, productive and effective at what they do, they need to build, nurture and construct their online digital footprints by being capable of demonstrating their thought leadership, expertise and extended experience interacting with customers and business partners to help solve their business problems.

Ginni Rometty, who I am sure you already know who she is, just recently stated “Engaged employees, they drive the client experience, and that in turn drives your business results, in that order” and that’s what it is all about. Happy Employees = Happy Customers.

It’s a journey, a long one, too! But one that’s worth it. One that I have already been involved with myself for the 12 years and still having a strong sense I am only reading the tip of the iceberg from the true potential. And why I am still there doing my part to change how things may have worked in the past, because there isn’t a guarantee that they would continue to work like that in the future.

Definitely, my father’s IBM is not my IBM, today’s, and that’s what excites me the most to keep pushing the limits till we eventually complete that Open Business journey.

Do let me know how I can be of further help, Ed. I will be more than happy to help out where I possibly can.

Hi Ed, thanks for reaching out and for the feedback comments! I am not sure about IBM, since I don’t represent it over here in this blog (See disclaimer > The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employers’ positions, strategies or opinions.), so I would wait for IBM to make its own statement around privacy and everything, but I already got a blog post brewing on that very same topic, which could be summarised with this particular tweet shared across by a good friend of mine David Cushman and which I thought would be worth while sharing across over here as well:

“Remember folks, #StayOpen If there’s any conspiracy it’s the one to make you disconnect and stop sharing. The centre would love that”

Like I said, I will be putting the blog post some time soon, as I get to find out more of the details of what’s been happening all along, but on the topic of privacy, and while acknowledging it’s a very important subject, openness and transparency should help clarify things further along. The key thing, for me, in this whole situation is how it’s asymmetric and not symmetric. The real power is on whether we keep walking the two way street, vs. just one… But more on that in that upcoming blog post…

Rather than noodle in private, why not noodle in public on this blog? I think there is a lot to learn of the “tradeoffs” for “security” and “rights – translated in this case to ‘privacy’ – as expressed by the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence”.

Asking questions and being ignorant and learning from others is no failing I recognize.

We are noodling on it in public, aren’t we? Isn’t that what we doing in this blog where you have started off the conversation and I share my ¢2 worth of comments as well? 🙂

To your follow-up, there is certainly a lot to learn, indeed, but I’m not interested in the tradeoffs, more than I am in the compromise of using all of that data for good, vs. whatever else, and in a dual street where our data becomes their data and their data becomes our data. It’s called equity of free flows of information for better decision making. Failure to apply any of those principles will just result in a tyranny of those who possess the access to the information, all of it, vs. who don’t have such privilege. It’s a fair game that introduces the whole concept of Government 2.0.

Whether governments are ready for such transformation, or not, we will have to wait. I can tell you netizens have been readying for years on it and becoming very good at it.

I’m all for very much less secrets. However, the type of data being collected is more than just personal (static) information. Even so, much personal static information is not something that most people want to share. (Health history, marriage history, traffic ticket history, arrests without conviction history, …).

My discomfort comes from the real time tracking history of people (telephone “metadata”, cell phone gps tracking, email “metadata”, email contents, texting contents and cell phone contents). My discomfort has grown exponentially since the IRS thing and the hacking of Sharyl Attkisson’s computer. The very fact that the information exists means that people like Lois Lerner, Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning and who knows else can use both static and dynamic personal data for their own purposes.

I have seen no proposals of how to acquire such data AND protect it. I’ve seen no proposals
from giant companies for solutions that would comfort most thinking people. It is as if everyone (individuals and corporations) are just looking the other way and hoping disaster doesn’t happen to them.

The only half-hearted solution I can think of is

1. Audit in great detail all access to the data
Verify the audit weekly. Store the audit
records forever. The audit must
be the highest
quality part of the entire “prism” system —
provably correct.

2. Once a year give person A complete access to
audit records concerning person A.

3. Should any such data be used outside of
the law, that person who accessed it is
subject to both criminal and civil liability.

#1 says whatever data is accessed is
recorded.
#2 says the person you were concerned about
can find your name if you accessed data
about that person.
#3 says you are subject to criminal and civil
liability if you access data illegally.

Social media provides a medium through which people can communicate. Building trust without
ever seeing someone or speaking to him or her is the challenge for people and companies. Build a raison d’être that draws people and social media will be the tie that binds once that trust is built.

Hi Ed, those are some very interesting thoughts and I appreciate you sharing them along. If anything, they are highlighting a very interesting dilemma that we will have to start addressing sooner rather than later: what are we going to do with all of that (now public) information. I think the challenge doesn’t reside on whether privacy or security need to be taken into account, which they should, but it is more what kind of use would you want to make of such data and I think that’s where the issues abound, because we just haven’t explored them well and deep enough.

Over time we are going to see how those who control those flows of information are eventually going to be the ones with the real power in terms of decision making and while I can see how many would object to such kind of power I think the potential lies on whether that information can be used for good, vs. not good. That’s where the moral and ethics of the whole story kicks in, because somehow we are all inclined to think that power will be used for no good purpose and why we would need to perhaps regulate it to a certain extent. Your suggestions above could well be good indicators to get that conversation going, because so far it’s not happening.

Over here, in the EU, the situation is a whole lot more different since the access to such information always needs to come forward from a judicial decision, so unless judges are involved such access to information is illegal, and that’s perhaps one of the steps that needs to also take place in the US, although taking into account the various different implications, obviously.

Hi Avelina, Thanks for dropping by over here and for sharing the comment across. Apologies for the long delay on the response as I am just recovering from a nasty spam comment attack from over the last few days … Just checked out the URL you shared above and it looks like it would fit in perfectly all right with the article I shared earlier on today as well on celebrating the World Wide Web’s 25th anniversary, highlighting perhaps how there is still plenty of work to get done to address plenty of the issues and problems that piece of research shows. Thanks for sharing it across!

Hi Leticia, thanks a lot for reaching out and for the feedback! You’ve got a message waiting for you, whenever you have got a chance… Please do take a look and let me know and much appreciated the feedback while getting in touch 🙂

My research is focused on understanding the lifestyle of Digital Nomads and how hostels can better serve the needs of these adventurous international workers. Some hostels, like Pacific Tradewinds, have even started travel Coworking communities to help working travelers during their travel-work lifestyle.

During my initial research, I found your blog. I was fascinated by your life plan because I am still student. You seem to be a specialist of traveling.
Therefore, I would really appreciate the opportunity to have a brief 10-15 Telephone/Skype conversation with you about your knowledge and experience with Digital Nomads. If you are open to this, please let me know some good times when you would be available.

If this is not possible for you and you would prefer a short written survey, please let me know and I will send this to you by email.

Many thanks for reaching out and for the feedback comments. I would be delighted to spend some time with you talking about one of my favourite topics as of late, indeed! Early next week, Monday or Tuesday, would probably work all right, but since I don’t know exactly which timezone you are in, I will reach out to you separately to find some good times for us to meet up remotely.

My name is Jacqueline from Neuvoo.com, a job search aggregator. I would like to know if it’s possible to consider publishing an article written by us on your website. (http://www.elsua.net/)

Our articles are related to job search, leadership skills, motivational, networking, working women, education, bilingualism, working after retirement or college, technology, education, working abroad, lifestyle and other similar subjects. We are currently trying to reach out to job seekers by giving them some advice on this regard.

Being shown on your page would mean the world to us because we believe you have a very solid site with a lot of useful information and visitors.

Here’s some information about us:
Our free job search aggregator is very easy to use, job seekers can look for any job, anywhere easily by location, profession, industry, or keyword. We have over 20.000.000 jobs indexed and more than 5 million jobs across the United States.
We are also present globally, showing jobs from 64 countries in all five continents, making us the largest job database in the world at the moment.

Hi Jacqueline, thanks a lot for reaching out and for the info request. It does sound really interesting and I would gladly take your offer to share some insights about what Neuvoo is doing to help job seekers find new jobs and progress with their careers.

However, at this point in time I think it’s a bit early as I am in the progress of redefining the purpose, intent, and content to be shared in this blog and I would kindly ask you whether you could hold it for a week or two, till I am capable of sorting a few things out and then I will go ahead and reach out to you.

Thanks a ton for all the great readings. Have always appreciated your great thoughts, reviews and insights. Would you consider reviewing our MacBook leather sleeve on your blog? If so, I would love to send a sleeve over. You seem to move around a lot and work so think you will appreciate the sleeve. Thanks again for your great blog and keep it up!

Hello Rasmus, many thanks for reaching out and for the kind comments! They are greatly appreciated and really glad you have enjoyed the blog posts. Way too cool! Thanks for that!

Regarding your commentary above about giving it a try to your MacBook leather sleeve(s), I would be truly delighted to give it a go and take it for a spin, but I’m afraid I’m travelling for work a whole lot more these days with my 12.9-inch iPad Pro than my MacBook Air, which is staying at home as it’s coming closer to 5 years of service and it’s not up to the standards of heavy travelling at this point. In fact, I’m debating at the moment whether I will just go ahead with the iPad Pro as my main computing device once the MacBook Air is done for service or whether to buy a new one in the process, and so far the iPad Pro only argument seems to be winning.

I have been to your Web site and didn’t see any sleeves for iPad Pro, so I’m not too sure whether I was looking at the wrong place, or whether you don’t cater for those. If you do, please do let me know, as I will be very interested in trying out the iPad Pro sleeve and share my thoughts about it at a later time.

Let me know what you think with a follow-up comment over here or via a quick note to the email address attached to this comment. Thanks a lot for the generous offer and opportunity and look forward to hearing from you soon again. Have a good one!